Wednesday, 19 November 2008

Honesty: with or without?

A few weeks ago I went to the Quilters Guild Region 1 Area Day to hear Alysn Midgelow Marsden. Her work with metals is intriguing and some of her sculptural ,metallic gauze ,pieces cast wonderful shadows with the projector light cast through them. I related to her descriptions of her creative approach, particularly as she too was a scientist - something about the thought processes? The trader was Art Van Go and although I managed to resist the metals brought along to tie in with Alysn's talk, I succumbed to a bottle of Liquitex Iridescent Medium and have been putting it through its paces!I've been using old quilting samples that already have layers of acrylic paint built up on them - the medium is translucent and works best with transparent or translucent paints (I used Golden Fluid Acrylics) so the underlying colours are important.I was particularly taken with a narrow strip of old durham quilt that I'd painted to an inch of its life with ovals and circles then saw the jar of Honesty (Lunaria spp.) on the shelf above me with just that quality of iridescence. I stitched into it with Madeira FS metallic no 20 thread ( what a find that was - a well behaved subtle metallic) and then made it up into a 12 inch journal quilt with a photo printed on fabric and some rather appropriate oval dot batik.

I love the layered transparent effect that you get with Honesty and had printed some photos on organza. One fell accidently on the 'finished' journal quilt and now I'm not sure that it doesn't improve it ! Something to do with the differing scale of image, quality of fabric and linking of the 2 sides? So what's your honest opinion? ( sorry - I've been trying to resist the pun but it got the better of me) With or without organza layer?

13 comments:

Definitely WITH! Love it, Margaret. I have had a longing to work with Honesty seeds for a while now but only got as far as photographing a bunch of seed heads - glad to see you have done something. Also like the different scales from batik fabric, through quilting to printed organza. A larger piece possible....?

Sorry to contradict anyone... :-)Although the effect may be stunning, you take something away from the fresh, bold and in a good sense primitive look. Just what I feel. It takes so much to become simple, don't spoil it.

This is one of those really tough questions - I really liked it before the organza fell on top, but being a firm believer in serendipity, it's almost as if the muse made the organza fall on top - maybe the answer is to try to figure out how to attach it to the quilt?

Oooo goodness me, they're both lovely but both different so it's impossible to choose! I like it without, because it then has a simplicity of line and shape, but I like it with because of it's complexity and movement. Exactly the opposite reasoning in fact. You will just have to make 2 for all us indecisive ones!!